Brand Innovators is excited to officially announce the Brand Innovators Advisory Board, a team of chief marketers from the world’s leading brands, who will help guide Brand Innovators’ continued growth as the leading community of brand side marketers for the industry.
The esteemed group includes high profile marketing leaders spanning CPG, automotive, financial services, entertainment, travel, retail and beyond.
“We’re extremely proud to have each and every member serving on our Advisory Board,” said Brandon Gutman, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Brand Innovators. “These individuals are all leading CMOs in their respective business verticals as well as across the industry as a whole. They are the perfect group to help advise Brand Innovators as we continue to scale as the leading community and content platform for brand side marketers.”
“Now that Brand Innovators is powering Club CMO, it’s even that much more important we have an Advisory Board consisting of the top CMOs in the industry,” said Marc Sternberg, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Brand Innovators. “Our team will be receiving invaluable advice from these Fortune 500 insiders to ensure what we’re producing across our physical and digital products are exceptional.”
Brand Innovators is providing its advisory board members with a platform for peer to peer networking and learning exchange in addition to offering additional benefits which includes powering innovation summits throughout the year at their respective companies.
The board shares perspectives from across different verticals that help senior leaders in their own practices. “As a Brand Innovators advisory board member, I benefit from being a part of a dynamic community that’s the right blend of sport and culture,” said Chris Davis, CMO & senior vice president of merchandising at New Balance. “Brand Innovators delivers a best-in-class operation, where each event is a source of inspiration for me and my team. A key benefit is the access to pinnacle service providers, who continue to deliver innovative solutions for my organization.”
Sephora’s CMO Zena Arnold has been involved with Brand Innovators since the early days. “It has been great to discuss top-of-mind topics in marketing with the board from creative to AI and everything in between,” she said. “It has been really helpful to have a trusted source of marketers to reach out to for best practice sharing and advice.”
Andrew Sneyd, executive vice president of marketing at FanDuel is looking forward to the Board’s ability to elevate the marketing business. “We have an opportunity to continue to shape the kind of impact that we can have,” said Syned. “I have been involved with Brand Innovators for over five years and I am most excited to see the spot where it is at now. The scale of how many people are involved was striking while at Cannes. Seeing 4000 badges being ready to be picked up was pretty remarkable. The hope and scale of the kind of people that are involved facilitates a lot of great advancement of understanding how to make a difference.”
“The environment in which we operate is rapidly changing at an accelerated pace and the more that we have the opportunity to connect with others that are going through similar opportunities and challenges, the better we can learn best practices from others the better,” he added.
During Cannes, Brand Innovators officially welcomed Club CMO to its network. “I am truly excited about Brand Innovators powering Club CMO,” said Fernando Machado, CMO at NotCo, who has been involved in the community for well over a decade. “The more marketers we can bring together, the better. That’s the power of our community. A community that strives to share knowledge, experiences and pushes everyone to do better. Club CMO alway shared a similar mindset so now we will have the great opportunity to double down on that with Brand Innovators and Club CMO coming together.”
Linda Bethea, head of marketing at Danone, is also looking forward to coming together with Club CMO. “The integration of BI and the CMO Club only serves to strengthen the incredible marketing community we have built over the past 12 years by increasing the scale and caliber of its members,” said Bethea. “The role of CMO is an incredibly exciting but challenging one, with pressure to deliver both short and long-term growth in an ever evolving consumer, media, and retail landscape. CMOs need help navigating these challenges and staying abreast of these changes.”
Michelle Froah, global CMO of ETS, has been a highly passionate and active Advisory Board member for years. “We have an energized team of board members focused on impact across the industry,” she said. “In our experience we see that senior marketers have an increasingly wider remit to drive growth and impact in their businesses. We’re interested in finding ways to support developing marketers in seeking out varied experiences across the marketing sector so they can be successful in leading that wider remit.”
Advisory board gatherings offer members a place to tackle the complex issues facing senior marketers today. “On a quarterly basis, we throw out big chunky subjects that we want to talk about that pertain to us, so if there is a big topic that is a big challenge for us and I want to see what my peers in other industries and companies are doing, we’ll put that on the agenda,” said Tara McRae, chief marketing and digital officer of Clarks, who also said the advisory board is one of the first places she goes when she sees one of her peers’ brand names on an agency pitching her so that she can get insight on how it is to work with the agency.
Cheryl Guerin, EVP of marketing at Mastercard, is in the middle of a major marketing transformation and coming together helps her do internal work through a current lens. “What was commonplace to marketing leaders just three years ago has been turned upside down – not to mention the economic and cultural changes that are ever-present,” said Guerin. “More than ever, it’s critical to understand what’s ahead—and that is nearly impossible to do so. That’s where having a group of trusted industry peers can make such a difference. Brand Innovators can help foster the right conversations at the right times so we’re better equipped to navigate challenging times and lead our teams successfully.”
We know that brand marketers appreciate snackable content, so we decided to divide this article into two delicious spoonfuls. Next week, we’ll hear from additional Advisory Board members including: Cadillac CMO Melissa Grady; Casey Hurbis, CMO of Rocket Mortgage; Hertz CMO Wayne Davis; Gabrielle Wesley, CMO of Mars Wrigley; Sophie Kelly, Senior Vice President of Global Tequila, DIAGEO; Pepsi’s CMO Todd Kaplan; Jill Cress, CMO of H&R Block; Marcel Macondes, global CMO of Anheuser-Busch; and NFL’s EVP/CMO Tim Ellis. Stay tuned for when we publish Part 2 of this feature next Wednesday.
